Re: Origins of the First Living Cell and Evolution

The links which you gave me concerning the synthesising of nucleotides were just what I was hoping for – thank you - although I wasn’t able to download many of the full articles as quite a few of the sites required full membership, which I don’t have.

Based on the summaries therefore I am pleased to discover that there are now ways to synthesise nucleotides in modest quantities compared to the miniscule quantities before. When I first wrote a series of discussion papers quite a few years ago, nobody considered the ‘miniscule routes’ as credible processes of origin. Yet it seemed ridiculous to think that we couldn’t find a ‘major’ synthetic process, considering that we are dealing with chemicals that can be generated chemically by biological means. I’m glad that this part of the puzzle has been filled.

However in terms of abiogenesis, there are still a number of unresolved factors as far as I can see.

Firstly, I am not aware that nucleotides are generated in the natural environment outside a living cell, and as you acknowledged, re-cycling or the use of bio-mechanisms remains the primary means of production in the lab. If there was a successful high yield process before, why do we not see remnants of it now?

The initial articles that you mentioned placed a great emphasis on Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN), particularly when deployed with a series of more complex chemicals, and catalysts. HCN has also apparently been linked to the generation of some amino acids via different processes. But this is where we start hitting more problems.

As a practical way for generating the large number of nucleotides and amino acids necessary for the ‘random’ generation of useful proteins and RNA etc. the synthetic methods so far identified seem to need HCN to be present at the start but then to have been almost completely removed from the environment by the time that the first cells appear, (probably as bacteria). How did the removal occur? (To argue that it all happened in space and that the Earth was just seeded with the more complex chemicals such as diaminomaleonitrile (DAMN), and ammonium formate, is undermined by the fact that this doesn’t seem to be still happening).

Most guesses about the early proto-atmosphere, (particularly in relation to amino acids – along the lines of the Miller/Urey approach), do not include HCN. The catalysts which were used to enhance the outputs of certain experiments also do not seem to be abundant in the world, and not on a scale which the ‘natural experimentation of sterile chemicals would seem to require.

We can also say that some synthesis techniques apparently require freezing temperatures while others require very high temperatures, but the resulting, highly reactive chemicals have to survive and then migrate to different environments in order to enable the development of life by mixing with the many other chemical molecules which had to be generated in parallel, yet using a series of alternate chemical processes/environments.

On top of this, most theories of the early planetary environment suggest that regular asteroid collisions would have wiped-out all early forms of experimental life of several occasions – further reducing the period of time available for bio-experimentation.

In short, there are a lot of convoluted processes that all have to miraculously converge to produce the first cell within an ever reducing timescale. The only way to apparently overcome this is through a process which will probably need a sense of direction in order to see an evolutionary progression – one that will not be available through survival of the fittest or positive selection, (which is based in Thought).

It is this sense of ‘primordial direction’ by unthinking/unaware chemicals which takes us well out of the accepted capabilities of matter energy and forces us to consider other means by which those capabilities might arise. The deployment of codes plays even more heavily on this consideration.

In the world of physics, we see exactly the same questions being raised when people try to resolve the facts surrounding the ‘dual slit’ and ‘faster-than-light’ experiments... which could be easily resolved with other types of stuff for instance. Instead, the mainstream scientific community which is determined to avoid obvious possibilities, jumps through hoops backwards to try and resolve things within their view of reality, and end up promoting ideas that undermine the very things they are trying to protect... their concept of matter/energy.

Re: Origins of the First Living Cell and Evolution

Your initial statement on nucleotides did not mention anything about yield or types of starting material or synthetic routes:

scientificphilosophe wrote:Again - I believe there is no known way to synthesise nucleotides in order to generate DNA and RNA, and we can only 'manufacture' such things using living cells... that's even before we consider the code aspects of this mechanism.

As such, all the qualifiers that you've now introduced have no bearing on whether the statement is true or false. That of course doesn't mean I don't want to get into all those new points that you've raised - I do and I look forward to it. However, before we proceed, would you please grant me the courtesy of explicitly acknowledging that the statement (quoted above), which you had originally assumed was true, is indeed false? I know you've already strongly implied that in your above post - but it would be honorable and credible of you if you make that explicit.

Re: Origins of the First Living Cell and Evolution

I have found such a reference in an old Wikipedia download from 10 years ago. The article under that same banner headline now seems to have been re-written avoiding the point altogether.

In fairness, I wasn't aware of such a process, so to that extent it was true. I have acknowledged that there are now processes which can truly synthesise as opposed to the 'accidental' production which was assumed by earlier processes due to their incredibly low yields.

Re: Origins of the First Living Cell and Evolution

I have found such a reference in an old Wikipedia download from 10 years ago. The article under that same banner headline now seems to have been re-written avoiding the point altogether.

In fairness, I wasn't aware of such a process, so to that extent it was true. I have acknowledged that there are now processes which can truly synthesise as opposed to the 'accidental' production which was assumed by earlier processes due to their incredibly low yields.

Re: Origins of the First Living Cell and Evolution

hyksos » July 4th, 2017, 2:51 am wrote:But this new creationist talking point, wherein a protein chain could, "never form in the right order because there was not enough time" I'm not entirely convinced of this and I have never read it anywhere outside of creationist blogs and chat rooms. The op's constant hammering away at that particular point seems to be getting tired after two pages.

I am not a creationist - I simply recognise a good point when I see it. It needs to be answered.

To clarify, as per the opening pages of comments, it is not that a useful protein chain couldn't form by accident, but that if it happened once it could never be expected to happen again by chance - and this is important when we consider that these are relatively short lived molecules.

In short, if it can't happen by chance then there needs to be a process, and so far we don't seem to be even close to identifying such a process that could operate before the first living cell.

It is also important to find a sense of direction for unthinking chemical to follow if there is to be an alternate evolutionary process, otherwise there is no way for one rare complex protein to be identified as 'useful' when used with another equally rare protein, amidst a myriad of random protein-like crap.

Those were the earlier points, but you have made some interesting comments too.

(1.)There is an enormous amount of phosphorous tied up in DNA. (it appears in the so-called "backbone" of the DNA molecular chain). That is a lot of phosphorous, and science has no idea how that much phosphorous made its way to the surface of the earth. This is an unsolved problem in science.

I hadn't been alerted to this, so very interested to investigate further.

(2.)DNA is replicated by a complex machine called a reverse transcripterase enzyme. RTEs are required to replicate DNA, but RTEs are encoded by DNA. (howcouldDNAhavecodedtheenzymethatreplicatesitwhenitencodesth--! ) Hmmm.... Biochemistry offers little towards this problem and the solution to this chicken-and-egg conundrum stands unresolved.

Are these the enzymes that work with ribosomes and RNA to assemble the proteins reliably?If so, I understand that the role of these enzymes is to help weaken the monomer bonds to enable the polymer bonds to form - even in an aqueous environment. Is that right?

(3.)What is "life"? What does something being "alive" mean? Give your answer in terms of physics. Many brilliant scientists have tried to define life in terms of physics. All have failed. Freeman Dyson wrote a book where he really seriously tried to answer "What is life?" In the final chapter he admits failure and relents. A particular quote from that book struck me and sticks with me until today :

Life by its very nature is resistant to simplification , whether on the level of single cells or ecological systems or human societies.

Wikipedia talks of over 280 definitions, and it's a good point.I would re-phrase the quote which you gave along the following lines...For the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics to operate, something has to be assembled before it can be returned to a more chaotic state, and there are only two assembling forces - gravity and life.

Re: Origins of the First Living Cell and Evolution

As a summary of the conversation so far, and as an invitation for others to contribute, the position we have reached is this:-

There still doesn’t seem to be an explanation for the origin of the first living cell, and there are valid reasons to consider that Matter/Energy may not be the only factor responsible for the emergence of Life.

Even if we can find mechanisms to produce basic nucleotides and amino acids that are consistent with the historical circumstances of our planet (and I don’t believe we have yet found those), then there are mathematical realities which make the emergence of the first living cell by ‘chance’ almost impossible –in terms of

• the available timeframes, (in the few million years between rocks solidifying on our early planet and the first fossils seemingly appearing), which are shortened even further by a presumed series of catastrophic early collisions with asteroids/meteorites etc.; • the fact that ‘chance’ isn’t possible within the principle of cause & effect; • the mechanisms of life are not just chemical, but based in a series of linked codes, which imply purpose and direction that should be outside the realms of unthinking chemicals; • in establishing a method by which a consistent pattern of improvement/development may be generated in any alternate process of Evolution; and• there is no perceived evolutionary path for the Ribosome.

The current process for Evolution is reliant on the Living Cell as the one mechanism available, and also generally requires a sense of direction to be established through survivability and even Thought, (eg. deploying ‘positive selection’ to accelerate the evolutionary process as concluded to be necessary by Richard Dawkins etc.). Survivability is marginally possible for a chemical presence even if it doesn’t establish a basis of continual improvement for sterile chemicals.

So we have a number of fundamental challenges before we can explain life in a determinist way based on Matter/Energy alone.

Recent posts have been dominated by the desire to show that we now have ways in which to synthesise potentially large quantities of nucleotides via a particular set of chemical reactions based on a starting position of Hydrogen Cyanide, (which is a good improvement on 30 years ago), but it remains inconsistent with our experience of life in that Hydrogen Cyanide would have to disappear completely so as to prevent it from killing off the living cells it was supposedly producing. If we suggest that Hydrogen Cyanide is still present as clouds of gas in the vicinity of our solar system, then this not only has to be demonstrated but it also has to be explained why we don’t continue to see the intermediate chemicals raining down on us from outer space in the world today.

It has also been admitted that in the modern world it remains easiest to generate nucleotides via living cells, or to re-cycle these chemicals, rather than generating them from scratch in the lab.

Some amino acids have been shown to arise quickly in some chemical mixtures, but this does not included all of the ones deemed necessary for life from the same starting conditions, and there is a lot of guesswork about what the chemical conditions were on our planet in the distant past. However that isn’t the real difficulty. Assembling them into useful chains/polymers is key.

Both protein polymers and DNA/RNA polymers are short lived chemicals outside their protective cellular environments so they need to be reliably reproduced if they are to have the time to ‘naturally' form workable combinations, rather than the suggestion that they all happened to miraculous appear on the right day in the right form with the right codes available at the fortuitous moment that a membrane encompassed them. The only way to reproduce them reliably is the living cell. We have no other process.

While the timeframes could be extended by saying that life developed elsewhere in the Universe, we have to then explain how it managed to get here. To suggest that Proteins, DNA, RNA and even living cells travelled across the extreme conditions of space for millions or even billions of years seems far fetched even using the vehicle of a comet. Of course there could be spaceships....

The point of all this is to be honest about the challenges we face in providing an explanation and potentially recognising that other factors than sterile chemicals might be involved.

There still doesn’t seem to be an explanation for the origin of the first living cell, and there are valid reasons to consider that Matter/Energy may not be the only factor responsible for the emergence of Life.

Even if we can find mechanisms to produce basic nucleotides and amino acids that are consistent with the historical circumstances of our planet (and I don’t believe we have yet found those), then there are mathematical realities which make the emergence of the first living cell by ‘chance’ almost impossible –in terms of

• the available timeframes, (in the few million years between rocks solidifying on our early planet and the first fossils seemingly appearing), which are shortened even further by a presumed series of catastrophic early collisions with asteroids/meteorites etc.; • the fact that ‘chance’ isn’t possible within the principle of cause & effect; • the mechanisms of life are not just chemical, but based in a series of linked codes, which imply purpose and direction that should be outside the realms of unthinking chemicals; • in establishing a method by which a consistent pattern of improvement/development may be generated in any alternate process of Evolution; and• there is no perceived evolutionary path for the Ribosome.

Valid reasons to consider matter/energy may not be the only factor?? What do you mean by this? A supernatural force? I've read nothing in this thread that supports that view point if that's where you are going with that statement.

Regarding your bulleted list:• the available timeframes, (in the few million years between rocks solidifying on our early planet and the first fossils seemingly appearing), which are shortened even further by a presumed series of catastrophic early collisions with asteroids/meteorites etc.;

Millions of years may not be important in geologic terms, but quite substantial in biological terms - I do not see the short timeframe as an important factor for the Origins of life, give the proper catalyst for all we know the process could take minutes.

• the fact that ‘chance’ isn’t possible within the principle of cause & effect; Chance is a human concept that roughly means the same thing as "we do not know what the true mechanism is"

• the mechanisms of life are not just chemical, but based in a series of linked codes, which imply purpose and direction that should be outside the realms of unthinking chemicals; Something exist because of the mechanisms that allow for its existence, including "unthinking" chemicals bonded to one another in a manner that allows for replication of these patterns - of course the "mechanisms of life are not just chemical" is a very vague statement so I am not sure what you are truly getting at here.

• in establishing a method by which a consistent pattern of improvement/development may be generated in any alternate process of Evolution; and

I'm not sure if that's a sentence

• there is no perceived evolutionary path for the Ribosome.Because you do not perceive it? Even if your statement is true does that mean the ribosome did not evolve? Hardly.

I'm not here to debate any of these points, particularly as it appears none of this summary is shaped by any of Bio's comments - but feel free to take my thoughts as you will.

Re: Origins of the First Living Cell and Evolution

scientificphilosophe » Thu Aug 10, 2017 9:15 am wrote:There still doesn’t seem to be an explanation for the origin of the first living cell, and there are valid reasons to consider that Matter/Energy may not be the only factor responsible for the emergence of Life.

There are multiple hyptheses for the origin of the first living cell. several of these have been referenced earlier in the conversation. It has been noted, at least once, that the details have not yet been determined, nor the precise pathway to life identified. However, that is quite different from claiming that there is no explanation for the origin of the first living cell.

Given the multiple hypothesese available (and the interesting possibility that more than one of them may be true) there is no reason to propose something supernatural to explain the origin of life. That would only be the case if all hypotheses proved to be dead ends and subtantial evidence pointed towards the supernatural. Neither is the case.

scientificphilosophe » Thu Aug 10, 2017 9:15 am wrote:Even if we can find mechanisms to produce basic nucleotides and amino acids that are consistent with the historical circumstances of our planet (and I don’t believe we have yet found those),

I stand ready to be corrected on this next point. You appear to perceive the primeval environment as a singular one. Such was not the case. There was great diversity in terms of temperatures, pressures, composition, energy supplies, etc. If you accept - as you appear to have done earlier - that nucleotides and amino acids can be naturally synthesised then there is no difficulty in finding an appropriate environment for such synthesis. What is your reason for disputing this?

Re: Origins of the First Living Cell and Evolution

I'm not a huge fan of Niels deGrasse-Tyson by any stretch. But at this juncture I am thinking this thread stands as a testament to something which deGrasse-Tyson said during a TV interview.

This, over time, has been described by philosophers as the God-of-the-gaps. If that's how you, if that's where you're going to put your God in this world, then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.

If that's how you're going to invoke God. If God is the mystery of the universe, these mysteries, we're tackling these mysteries one by one. If you're going to stay religious at the end of the conversation, God has to mean more to you than just where science has yet to tread. So to the person who says, "Maybe dark matter is God," if the only reason why you're saying it is because it's a mystery, then get ready to have that undone.

I would like to emphasize the phrase "God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance."

The OP of this thread needs to stop implying things and beating around the bush. He needs to take a hard, concrete position regarding where in the chain of early pre-biotic chemistry, did God intervene and perform magic?

Just tell us straight up where God did the magic on the chemicals. Did he intervene in the transition from RNA to DNA? And what exact magical trick did he perform there? Like draw a diagram -- show us on that diagram of molecules where exactly "And then God does this here" and draw a little arrow.

I get increasingly worn down and tired of these sideways implications of "the realms of God that I won't get into". No. Stop it. Get into it and get into it with a coherent claim. Stop the fence-sitting and adopt a strong, concrete position on this. Tell us what you are claiming and we will answer to that claim.

Re: Origins of the First Living Cell and Evolution

He knows he can't "get into it" because this is a science forum, and that departure from the topic would end the thread. God is not a scientific hypothesis or explanation or anything, so it would be discussed in the PCF side, in metaphysics and/or religion. In science, as the sayiing goes, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

Re: Origins of the First Living Cell and Evolution

I think you have been placing your own interpretations on some of the points that I made, rather than reflecting my views.

Valid reasons to consider matter/energy may not be the only factor?? What do you mean by this? A supernatural force? I've read nothing in this thread that supports that view point if that's where you are going with that statement.

There are a number of comments in this thread, and also in the points that I made, which can reasonably imply capabilities that go beyond the known abilities of Matter/Energy as we observe it on Earth. These indicators might point to

- spontaneity/randomness and another type of stuff underpinning reality which might provide those capabilities.- factors outside the known Universe, (from Dark Energy to other dimensions - as has been speculated by several scientists)- alien creatures travelling here in their warp-drive spaceships, carrying samples of living cells... as has also been speculated in science.

There are many possibilities... but they all try to overcome the seemingly insurmountable problems which we encounter in this debate.

Millions of years may not be important in geologic terms, but quite substantial in biological terms - I do not see the short timeframe as an important factor for the Origins of life, give the proper catalyst for all we know the process could take minutes.

I think you miss the point here - especially in relation to the assembly of proteins and RNA. It is not just the complexity of achieving the individual amino acids or nucleotides from raw chemicals, but more significantly achieving the correct sequence of these components within a useful chain but without a design or any assembly mechanism. The maths was described earlier. If you can achieve it in minutes with just the right catalyst they you will win the Nobel Prize and the adoration of the world - but you can't... and millions of years is a tight timeframe in this context.

the fact that ‘chance’ isn’t possible within the principle of cause & effect; Chance is a human concept that roughly means the same thing as "we do not know what the true mechanism is"

Precisely - so when scientific articles describe the reproductive process as involving random or 'chance' changes in genetic code to produce mutations and thereby evolutionary development, rather than offering any precise mechanism which can be tested - we have a right to point out the flaws in the argument.

It is only in recent years that people have begun to offer credible suggestions for the mechanisms of such change - but they are tentative and have never been observed working in reality. Let's be honest about that. We are still in the realms of speculation - even within the scientific community.

Something exist because of the mechanisms that allow for its existence, including "unthinking" chemicals bonded to one another in a manner that allows for replication of these patterns

Apologies, I genuinely don't understand what this means.

of course the "mechanisms of life are not just chemical" is a very vague statement so I am not sure what you are truly getting at here.

I thought my reference to codes in the same phrase was very specific. For clarity I was referring to the code that provides a template description of a chain of amino acids to make a specific protein, but using a different set of chemicals. Plus the codes that translate it for replication and the chemicals which sense the codes and grab the necessary amino acids to then assemble each specific protein. Unthinking chemicals don't have a sense of purpose or any need for a code - let alone the ability to preserve it and use it.

If you take a different view perhaps you could explain this.

• in establishing a method by which a consistent pattern of improvement/development may be generated in any alternate process of Evolution; and

I'm not sure if that's a sentence

I didn't think we were trying to comment on grammar here - but for your interest... I agree that it is not a complete sentence - it is a bulleted point which is a partial sentence.

You didn't offer any alternate process of Evolution to develop the necessary working mechanisms of the living cell, before any cell existed, so I assume that you feel it is a fair point.

• there is no perceived evolutionary path for the Ribosome.Because you do not perceive it? Even if your statement is true does that mean the ribosome did not evolve? Hardly.

I do believe the statement is true - can you offer such an evolutionary path or mechanism?As things stand I don't believe that anybody can.You clearly presume that a chemical-based explanation will arise in future - presumably because you wish to preserve the established view instead of looking at the potential within certain issues.

This doesn't have to imply God, so why not open up to the possibilities?A Nobel Prize awaits.

Re: Origins of the First Living Cell and Evolution

I have not invoked the supernatural, religion, or God, and I do not see that to be necessary.You are the one who seems to want to do so - presumably because you feel threatened by the points being made.

There are multiple hyptheses for the origin of the first living cell. several of these have been referenced earlier in the conversation. It has been noted, at least once, that the details have not yet been determined, nor the precise pathway to life identified. However, that is quite different from claiming that there is no explanation for the origin of the first living cell.

To say that life emerged from a warm muddy chemical soup is not a hypothesis. It isn't even close to one.The same is true of saying that it may have emerged from the processes that build crystals, or that it arose near undersea volcanic vents, etc. This is no more than a wishful hope - and to be honest I see little difference between such pronouncements and the hope of religious zealots 2000 years ago. They have little substance.

I stand ready to be corrected on this next point. You appear to perceive the primeval environment as a singular one. Such was not the case. There was great diversity in terms of temperatures, pressures, composition, energy supplies, etc. If you accept - as you appear to have done earlier - that nucleotides and amino acids can be naturally synthesised then there is no difficulty in finding an appropriate environment for such synthesis. What is your reason for disputing this?

I have made no statement to even vaguely suggest that the primeval environment was static. I don't know why you said that.

I have acknowledged that some of the necessary amino acids can form naturally with base chemicals - although I believe that others have only been achieved with extraordinary chemical mixtures in the lab - although those conditions would prevent the formation of other amino acids that are required.

I have acknowledged that there is now a method for laboratory synthesis of some nucleotides, perhaps even all of them, but I have seen nothing to describe the circumstances in which they could all form naturally on the early Earth in circumstances that would also support the formation of all amino acids.

I am not saying that it is impossible but this is not an easy thing to conceive - even in terms of a suggested chain of events. If it was, there are a lot of people who would have done so by now. I am just being honest about the state of affairs.

Your preference to believe in one type of solution is fine, but given where we are, you cannot rule out other possibilities.

Re: Origins of the First Living Cell and Evolution

Braininvat » August 11th, 2017, 11:05 pm wrote:He knows he can't "get into it" because this is a science forum, and that departure from the topic would end the thread. God is not a scientific hypothesis or explanation or anything, so it would be discussed in the PCF side, in metaphysics and/or religion. In science, as the sayiing goes, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

Braininvat

You are supposed to be a moderator - please act like one and stop trying to insult me by labeling me as something I am not. This is not the first time you have done so.

I am not a creationist and Iam not an apologist for any religion.FYI there are other avenues which may provide solutions to these problems as I have consistently mentioned.

I try to be honest about what is known.Please accept these posts in that spirit and try to be constructive rather than mud-slinging.

My question does have a temporal issue in that science says that there isn't enough time since the start of our solar system (4.5 billion years ago) for the processes of life to have emerged by natural 'random' chemical reactions. The only way to bridge this gap is through a process - but there is no concept of what this process may have been - not even vaguely.

If the process of evolution cannot explain the origin of the first cell then you are back into the realms of God so it is an important consideration for everyone - whether you have religious leanings or not. It is not my problem per se.

Your words, near the start of the thread (bolding mine). Rather than specify "other avenues," you stated that "you are back into the realms of God...." which would lead most readers to believe that you are directing us towards an ID hypothesis. It is not mud-slinging to point out that this would fit better in the Religion forum. After this post, you repeatedly mischaracterized research into abiogenesis and spoke of "huge gaps." Again, it is rare to read this from anyone who is not advancing an ID theory. If you aren't, then you can take my comment as simply a reminder that you may be coming across that way. Finally, your repeated insistence that laboratories must be able to reproduce a chain of events that may require hundreds of millions of years...strikes me as akin to saying particle physics is worthless becaus the Large Hadron Collider can't mimic the Big Bang. The improbable, over the span of hundreds of millions of years, can become quite probable on a vast Earth. Your high level of confidence that this can't happen is, again, highly redolent of an ID proponent. So, if you aren't one, specify what rival theories you do favor.

Re: Origins of the First Living Cell and Evolution

The emergence of self-replication and information transmission in life's origin remains unexplained despite extensive research on the topic. A hypothesis explaining the transition from a simple organic world to a complex RNA world is offered here based on physical factors in hydrothermal vent systems. An interdisciplinary approach is taken using techniques from thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, oceanography, statistical mechanics, and stochastic processes to examine nucleic acid dynamics and kinetics in a hydrothermal vent from first principles. Analyses are carried out using both analytic and computational methods and confirm the plausibility of a reaction involving the PCR-like assembly of ribonucleotides. The proposal is put into perspective with established theories on the origin of life and more generally the onset of order and information transmission in prebiotic systems. A biomimicry application of this hypothetical process to PCR technology is suggested and its viability is evaluated in a rigorous logical analysis. Optimal temperature curves begin to be established using Monte Carlo simulation, variational calculus, and Fourier analysis. The converse argument is also made but qualitatively, asserting that the success of such a modification to PCR would in turn reconfirm the biological theory.

Re: Origins of the First Living Cell and Evolution

I have previously told you that I am not pursuing a religious agenda, (including after the post you mentioned), but you are persisting with this mud-slinging even now. Saying that you haven't come across neutral people who look at the science and consider alternate possibilities, (to theories that are not workable), is perhaps a comment on your circle of friends rather than me.

so it is an important consideration for everyone - whether you have religious leanings or not. It is not my problem per se.

I made it very clear why I 'dared' to make point about God, because (as I said before) Forest was trying to personalise the issue as 'my problem'... as you would have seen if you read the posts. I still feel it is valid to point out that this is a topic of interest to everyone. To misrepresent this is mud-slinging when I have corrected you before.

I have never suggested that laboratories have to 'reproduce a chain of events that may require hundreds of millions of years'. I have merely pointed out that scientists who do advance such theories need to provide evidence that their mechanisms are possible, and not just presume that their claims will be justified with facts at some later stage. This tendency within science is no better than religious speculation.

It is not a crime to point out that some hypotheses have major problems with them which make them unworkable/invalid. All you need is a mind that is prepared to see if the arguments stack up.

Currently they don't.

In relation to the article you provided, as far I as have been able to read, this simply deals with the formation of some of the chemical building blocks. It makes no attempt to say how a full cell with DNA coding; assembly lines (Ribosomes); metabolism, etc came about at just the right moment that a gelatinous or other membrane happened to enclose them.